My brother sent me a link to a speech by Roy F. Baumeister titled "Is There Anything Good About Men?" in which the professor explains that while society has "used" women, it has "used" men far more harshly.

Nor is this about trying to argue that men should be regarded as victims. I detest the whole idea of competing to be victims. And Iâ€™m certainly not denying that culture has exploited women. But rather than seeing culture as patriarchy, which is to say a conspiracy by men to exploit women, I think itâ€™s more accurate to understand culture (e.g., a country, a religion) as an abstract system that competes against rival systems â€” and that uses both men and women, often in different ways, to advance its cause. ...

When I say I am researching how culture exploits men, the first reaction is usually â€œHow can you say culture exploits men, when men are in charge of everything?â€ This is a fair objection and needs to be taken seriously. It invokes the feminist critique of society. This critique started when some women systematically looked up at the top of society and saw men everywhere: most world rulers, presidents, prime ministers, most members of Congress and parliaments, most CEOs of major corporations, and so forth â€” these are mostly men.

Seeing all this, the feminists thought, wow, men dominate everything, so society is set up to favor men. It must be great to be a man.

The mistake in that way of thinking is to look only at the top. If one were to look downward to the bottom of society instead, one finds mostly men there too. Whoâ€™s in prison, all over the world, as criminals or political prisoners? The population on Death Row has never approached 51% female. Whoâ€™s homeless? Again, mostly men. Whom does society use for bad or dangerous jobs? US Department of Labor statistics report that 93% of the people killed on the job are men. Likewise, who gets killed in battle? Even in todayâ€™s American army, which has made much of integrating the sexes and putting women into combat, the risks arenâ€™t equal. This year we passed the milestone of 3,000 deaths in Iraq, and of those, 2,938 were men, 62 were women.

One can imagine an ancient battle in which the enemy was driven off and the city saved, and the returning soldiers are showered with gold coins. An early feminist might protest that hey, all those men are getting gold coins, half of those coins should go to women. In principle, I agree. But remember, while the men you see are getting gold coins, there are other men you donâ€™t see, who are still bleeding to death on the battlefield from spear wounds.

Thatâ€™s an important first clue to how culture uses men. Culture has plenty of tradeoffs, in which it needs people to do dangerous or risky things, and so it offers big rewards to motivate people to take those risks. Most cultures have tended to use men for these high-risk, high-payoff slots much more than women. I shall propose there are important pragmatic reasons for this. The result is that some men reap big rewards while others have their lives ruined or even cut short. Most cultures shield their women from the risk and therefore also donâ€™t give them the big rewards. Iâ€™m not saying this is what cultures ought to do, morally, but cultures arenâ€™t moral beings. They do what they do for pragmatic reasons driven by competition against other systems and other groups.

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How Society \"Uses\" Men

My brother sent me a link to a speech by Roy F. Baumeister titled \"Is There Anything Good About Men?\" in which the professor explains that while society has \"used\" women, it has \"used\" men far more harshly.\n\n

Nor is this about trying to argue that men should be regarded as victims. I detest the whole idea of competing to be victims. And Iâ€™m certainly not denying that culture has exploited women. But rather than seeing culture as patriarchy, which is to say a conspiracy by men to exploit women, I think itâ€™s more accurate to understand culture (e.g., a country, a religion) as an abstract system that competes against rival systems â€” and that uses both men and women, often in different ways, to advance its cause. ...\n\nWhen I say I am researching how culture exploits men, the first reaction is usually â€œHow can you say culture exploits men, when men are in charge of everything?â€ This is a fair objection and needs to be taken seriously. It invokes the feminist critique of society. This critique started when some women systematically looked up at the top of society and saw men everywhere: most world rulers, presidents, prime ministers, most members of Congress and parliaments, most CEOs of major corporations, and so forth â€” these are mostly men.\n\nSeeing all this, the feminists thought, wow, men dominate everything, so society is set up to favor men. It must be great to be a man.\n\nThe mistake in that way of thinking is to look only at the top. If one were to look downward to the bottom of society instead, one finds mostly men there too. Whoâ€™s in prison, all over the world, as criminals or political prisoners? The population on Death Row has never approached 51% female. Whoâ€™s homeless? Again, mostly men. Whom does society use for bad or dangerous jobs? US Department of Labor statistics report that 93% of the people killed on the job are men. Likewise, who gets killed in battle? Even in todayâ€™s American army, which has made much of integrating the sexes and putting women into combat, the risks arenâ€™t equal. This year we passed the milestone of 3,000 deaths in Iraq, and of those, 2,938 were men, 62 were women.\n\nOne can imagine an ancient battle in which the enemy was driven off and the city saved, and the returning soldiers are showered with gold coins. An early feminist might protest that hey, all those men are getting gold coins, half of those coins should go to women. In principle, I agree. But remember, while the men you see are getting gold coins, there are other men you donâ€™t see, who are still bleeding to death on the battlefield from spear wounds.\n\nThatâ€™s an important first clue to how culture uses men. Culture has plenty of tradeoffs, in which it needs people to do dangerous or risky things, and so it offers big rewards to motivate people to take those risks. Most cultures have tended to use men for these high-risk, high-payoff slots much more than women. I shall propose there are important pragmatic reasons for this. The result is that some men reap big rewards while others have their lives ruined or even cut short. Most cultures shield their women from the risk and therefore also donâ€™t give them the big rewards. Iâ€™m not saying this is what cultures ought to do, morally, but cultures arenâ€™t moral beings. They do what they do for pragmatic reasons driven by competition against other systems and other groups.

\n\nThat's just the intro, but I bet the rest will interest you too.\n\n(HT: TierneyLab.)